Quiet
by Oparu
Summary: Post-Intruder. John knows something is wrong with Elizabeth, but he can't ask her.


iJohn kept expecting the dark circles under her eyes to fade. Trying to sneak into her office around the time he thought she should be sleeping, he started noticing the pattern almost as soon as she tried to hide it. Around twenty-one hundred, Elizabeth started to wear out, almost as if she was shutting down. She'd get coffee, for the last week she'd gone for a thermos and returned to her desk. When that failed to make her stop yawning, she'd start working standing up.

The last time he'd nonchalantly wandered by her office, she'd looked dizzy as she rubbed her temples. Coming up with a pathetic reason, double checking the crew evaluations, John lurked in the command center and watched her out of the corner of his eye. After twenty-seven minutes of rather obviously pretending to not be watching her, he gave up, dropped his feet to the floor, closed his tetris game, even though he was winning and wandered into her office.

Up close Elizabeth actually looked ill, she was two shades paler than normal, and she had trouble hiding it enough to smile at him.

"John," she began as she stared from her computer to him as if she was trying to decide if she should actually sit down and risk falling asleep. "Can I help you with something?"

"Just finishing my evaluations," John said tapping the palm pilot in his hand. "I figured as long as I'm ahead of Rodney he'll get the death glare instead of me." Taking his customary spot on the corner of her desk, he watched sympathetically as she bite her lip and sank into her chair. "You okay?"

"Yeah just-" Elizabeth stopped herself and shut her computer. "Nevermind."

"I-" John licked his lips and tried to act like he wasn't distinctly uncomfortable. "If there was something wrong with me, I'd talk to you."

She raised an eyebrow in quiet surprise and he shook his head slowly. "Okay," he corrected. "I would think about talking to you, and if I needed to I would."

Sitting back in her chair slowly, Elizabeth crossed her arms over her chest and studied him thoughtfully. "Do you think I need to talk?"

The bait hung in the air between them and he had to force himself to hold her gaze. "Yeah," John finally confronted her. "That or sleep. Lots of sleep."

"I have two days off," Elizabeth answered and sent him reeling slightly.

"You have those?" John wondered half-mockingly as he watched her shut down her computer.

Elizabeth smiled softly and seemed almost sad. "These two are mandatory," she started to explain before pausing and staring at him thoughtfully. "Do you have anything to drink?"

Missing a step on way out of her office, John took a moment to remember how to walk before he nodded. "You mean-?" he asked curiously.

"Beer, wine, moonshine...anything that makes you forget your problems," she chuckled dryly and caught the railing for a moment before shaking her head.

"Should you really be-?" he wondered as his hand went out to her protectively. "If you're sick, I mean."

"Being tired and being sick aren't the same thing," Elizabeth answered primly. To his amazement, she also accepted his hand and held it carefully in hers. "Every have one of those days you're certain just won't end?"

"Here?" John asked as he marveled at her letting him lead her to her quarters. "Frequently."

She smiled and nodded slightly, for a second she seemed like she was biting something back. "I might not be the best company tonight," Elizabeth apologized as he brought them to a halt outside her quarters. "I know we're not terribly close. I'd rather not impose on you."

Shrugging as he moved to lean against the doorway, John nodded as he searched her face for something that told him to leave. Finding nothing, he cleared his throat. "Who else have you got?"

"I used to have a dog," Elizabeth replied vaguely even as she opened the door to her quarters.

"Sedgewick," John remembered shyly following her in. In stark contrast to the last time he'd seen her room, this time it was messy. Red t-shirts and uniform trousers were in a pile in the corner instead of in neatly in the bin. Paperwork, some of it even the old fashioned type, and her spare computer were in a mess on the table by the bed. "Right?" he asked as the door shut them in together.

Sighing as she sank into her sofa, Elizabeth closed her eyes before she opened them sadly. "Simon has her now. I'm trying to get my mom to take her, but she's not sure she's ready to have a dog. She loves to travel and her job keeps her rather occupied."

"That has to be hard," John sympathized as he waved her quiet for a moment and tapped his comm. "There's a case under my bed," he admitted to Ronon over his radio. "No, move the box, behind that. Bring it to Elizabeth's quarters--"

"shut up," he snapped as Elizabeth started to smirk at him. "Yes, all right, yes. Just bring it would you?"

"Ronon's bringing us beer-" he explained as she nodded and pulled her feet up onto the sofa.

"My quarters?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

John stood in front of her and waited for her to give him permission to sit. "Not quite my usual pattern," he shrugged and hoped Ronon wouldn't have too much fun broadcasting where he was. "Suppose the IOA wouldn't go for a dog on Atlantis?"

Elizabeth was slowly curling tighter, as if her stomach was causing her pain. "I had a hard enough time talking them into letting me keep you," she teased through tight lips. "I'm sorry."

John took a step closer and stared down at her wondering if there was something he was supposed to say. "For what?"

"I think that was a little harsh," she admitted as she reached over to pat the sofa next to her. "Not everyone thinks as highly of dogs as I do."

Sitting down nervously next to her, John noticed her left hand was wrapped neatly around her stomach and he decided that she actually was in pain of some kind. "Are you sick?"

"Carson gave me something," she answered as her eyes closed for a moment. "At first it made me feel foggy, then tired, then- now- it's like someone's trying to sandblast something out of my insides." Biting her lip as she rolled her head towards him, she must have seen the confusion in his face because she sighed again. "How much is too much?" she asked as Ronon's heavy hand knocked once on the door. "I shouldn't just drop my life in your lap, should I?"

John stared at her for a moment before he got up and hurried to fetch his beer out of the corridor before someone got their hands on it. Two were missing from the six pack, but he figured that was a fair trade. Setting it at the foot of the sofa, John glanced around Elizabeth's quarters before he reached into his pocket for his utility knife and used it to open two of the bottles. "Useful," he shrugged as he handed a bottle to her.

"It's warm," she teased as she took a sip from the brown glass.

"You can drink it warm," John promised her as he flipped the top off another bottle and returned to her on the sofa. "At least, that's what the general said when he handed it over to me as a promotion gift."

Turning her head towards him, Elizabeth took another sip and smiled softly. "Remind me to tell him he's a good man," she replied thoughtfully before she went back to their previous conversation. "May I ask you something personal?"

"Giving you beer isn't enough?" John teased as he stared down his beer bottle towards his shoes. "Sure," he answered more seriously.

Elizabeth pulled her knees tighter and tucked them underneath her after she tossed her boots to the floor. "Why don't you have any children?"

Startled slightly, John stared at the small art pieces on the wall across from the sofa. "Never got around to it, I guess," he began slowly as the question sunk in. "I was married--" he caught her nodding out of the corner of his eye. "Nancy didn't want 'em, she was busy. They would have cut into her work a lot more than mine. I was always doing things like this- not quite this-" he corrected when she smirked at him. "I guess I couldn't make the commitment to being home long enough to raise them and she wasn't interested in doing it without me."

Elizabeth let his words hang in the air for a long time before she spoke. "What about now?"

"Now I'm in another galaxy," John replied simply. "I'm not married anymore. I suppose I'd have to have a woman- girlfriend-" catching himself tripping on his words he grinned at her over his beer. "You know."

"I always made them- children- a 'later'," she replied to her own question. "Later when I'm done with my dissertation. Later when I'm out of the Middle East, later when Simon--" there she stopped.

"He's the one who turned you down," John finished the thought for her as he shifted on the sofa and started facing her. "Carson said there was a doctor you wanted to come along. The guy didn't want to sign the waiver?"

Elizabeth's eyes suddenly went harsher. "Something like that," she explained without saying what was in her tone. "I slept with him," she admitted in a softer voice. "I was foolish, I thought- I was- I had feelings for him that I'd been carrying around for a year."

"Going home just brought them back," John finished for her. "Brought everything back worse than it was before. You forget you haven't been there, you loose your tolerance."

Grinning softly, Elizabeth clung to the beer in her hand as she swirled the bottom of it. "Like that part of university where you were so busy you forgot you hadn't had a drink all semester and got yourself pissed on a single beer?"

"Pissed?"

Shrugging, she drank the last of hers and accepted another one with a nod. John flipped off the top and passed it into her hands. "Year abroad," she explained as she sucked on the top of the bottle and tried to keep the foam on the floor.

"Just a year?" he asked lightly as he pondered how much he didn't know about her. Had she sat in pubs in England like he had once? Watched cricket? "Thought you'd lived on every continent."

"You just say drunk in China," she replied thoughtfully as she rolled the beer in her mouth. John had watched her grow steadily paler as the night had rolled onward. Elizabeth closed her eyes and brought her free hand back to her stomach.

"Carson didn't give you any pain meds," John realized when her face contorted slightly.

"Didn't ask," she corrected through clenched teeth. "Didn't seem right."

John took the beer bottle from her hand so she could wrap both of them around the pain in her abdomen. "You don't need to be punished," he reminded her awkwardly reaching for her shoulder. Elizabeth shuddered as if something cold had run over her body. When he didn't pull away, she moved closer to him. "It's okay." His assurance seemed pathetic, but she clung to his hand with a sweaty grip. "I can't know what it's like," he continued softly. "But it's okay."

Her head rested on his shoulder for a moment before he guided it into his lap. John felt her sigh heavily, but she seemed to need the contact. He didn't have anything to say, but her hand remained wrapped around his.

"Did I ever tell you about my time in Germany?" he began when the quiet in her quarters was starting to settle. "I pissed off my commanding officer and got myself transfered to Ramstein--"


End file.
